As you may have guessed, my wherewithal for doing the runs and checks needed for the analysis hasn't been great in recent months... I've not had as much free time to dedicate to gaming in general, and when I was part way through doing the assessment for the 3rd level spells, it was really feeling like work that I simply was not inspired to do. More and more, it felt like, while I might be creating interesting reads for those folk who were indeed interested, the analysis I was doing wasn't really able to serve any greater purpose of helping or improving anything - especially as we draw closer to the release date.
I galls me something fierce to leave a project unfinished - more than many of you may realise, in fact, given the way my brain works, but I've not managed to muster the energy or drive to put what little gaming free time I have on hold to do this work in its place.
I will not say that I won't get this done - the neurosis I feel over leaving the work incomplete may well outweigh other factors at some point soon, though I'm sure that my partners would tell me that doing so would be to the detriment of my better health at this stage... but it's unlikely. We'll see.
What I will say is this, regarding the newest information:
Level 12 grants us up to 6th level spell, so that's 4th, 5th and 6th left entirely untested in EA; they have internal testers and the people that were lucky enough to be able to fly internationally to be special testers for them - we'll have to hope they've done their due diligence, and that Larian have been open to listening to them when they say "Okay, I get that you think that Guardian of faith would be cooler if it picked up targets and threw them 50 feet in a random direction whenever it dealt its damage to them, and was able to be moved on your turn, and dealt its damage immediately whenever you did move it.... buuut that really unbalances a lot of things and is too broken".
They've told us that there will be 600 spells available at launch... but they include 'sub-spells' in that, and, for example, are counting Contagion as 6 spells... chromatic orb is another handful, hex is another handful, and indeed every spell with any options is being counted multiple times in that number for each option it has... spells with 'recast' functionality, as Larian are using, also count as separate spells and so of course they're being counted in the 600 as well. The short of it is, there's going to be a LOT missing.
Honestly... the concept of a D&D game that stops short of actually letting spellcasters get their full spell progression is deeply disappointing to me anyway... and just... deeply disappointed is how I'm feeling about a lot of stuff here.
They've teased us 44 spells... let us hope and cross our fingers (surely this doesn't need to be hoped for and is a given) that these 44 spells are not the full 4th-6th list. - One of the spells they teased is obviously a custom homebrew spell - it certainly cannot be the only one. - Several of the spells are not 4th-6th, but are of lower level (Blinding Smite, Ice Knife etc.). - Another of the spells is Destructive Wave - which is normally a Paladin Only spell (it's balanced to be a spell delivered to a half caster at 17th level - if it were a wizard or sorcerer spell it would need to be a higher level, for balance)... and at a level 12 cap our Paladins will NOT be getting their 5th level spells at all... so who is getting access to this spell and why?
I will try to get the rest of this focus analysis done before release, so folks can have a look, and if I can manage that, I'll try to do a gloss of the spells 4th through 6th level, in terms of what I feel we can expect, in relation to what exists and what they've teased. I can't promise I'll get any of that done, but I'll try.
